Apple Removes $599 Mac mini, Raises Starting Price to $799
Apple Removes $599 Mac mini, Raises Starting Price to $799
https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-removes-599-mac-mini-raises-starting-price-to-799
Publish Date: 2026-05-04 09:15:00
Source Domain: www.pcmag.com
UPDATE (05/04): A few weeks after the $599 Mac mini became unavailable for purchase on Apple’s online store, the company dropped the variant and effectively raised the Mac mini’s starting price to $799.
Earlier, you could get a base M4 Mac mini with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $599. Now, the most affordable configuration you can get is 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
Apple said last week that it saw unexpected demand for the device earlier this year and that it would take “several months” to meet the growing demand. The surge is mainly due to the rise of AI agents. Users are increasingly turning to the Mac mini and Mac Studio to run them locally, CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s latest earnings call.
“Both of these [mini and Studio] are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted, and so we saw higher than expected demand,” Cook said.
The outgoing CEO also talked about rising memory costs, noting that Apple was spending more than usual to acquire memory sticks and that he expects prices to go up in the upcoming quarters. This would have an “increasing impact” on Apple’s business, he added.
Original Story (04/24):
If you’re looking to buy a Mac mini, good luck finding a configuration of your choice. After higher-memory variants went out of stock last week, the base $599 M4 Mac mini has now been marked as “currently unavailable” on Apple’s online store.
Apple currently offers Mac minis with both M4 and M4 Pro chips. As of publishing, its US online store shows that all M4 variants, regardless of storage or memory, are currently unavailable. The M4 Pro variants, on the other hand, have long wait times, ranging from 5-6 weeks to 10-12 weeks for available configurations.
When Apple products go out of stock, it generally means the company is preparing to release an update. We haven’t heard strong rumors about an M5 Mac mini, but there is an…
